Books by Arturo Longoria

Wednesday, December 10, 2014

WOODCARVING ROUGH OUT KNIFE

Most people use a small axe to rough-out spoon blanks or
bowls.That’s what I’ve always done and
have become so accustomed to using an axe for the initial shaping in
woodcarving projects that anything else seems odd.I’ve seen videos where people perform their
rough-out work with large knives but it always looks clumsy.I invariably ask: Why doesn’t that guy just
use an axe?Even so, I started employing
some of my Woods Roamer knives for
the initial shaping and found them quite comfortable.The typical Woods Roamer knife is designed as an all-around survival knife and
I still think it’s superior to most other designs because its overall shape
lessons hand and wrist fatigue.But a
small axe (especially with a 1.5 lb head) makes the work easier because the
wood carver can use the weight of the axe to do a lot of the work.Still, I wanted to create a large knife I
could utilize expressly for woodcarving.I refer to the concept as “Completing
the Circle.”A man acquires a piece
of steel and a branch.From those two
things he makes a knife.Then he takes the
knife he’s made and uses it to carve a spoon or bowl or tiller a selfbow.The circle is completed because everything
the man uses he made himself and one project leads to another.Nothing was purchased at a store.Total and Absolute Self Sufficiency.

The knife pictured above is a concept tool and so far I am
quite pleased. In fact, I’ve taken to
using this knife for just about everything.
Camp craft, woodcraft, bushcraft…you name it this knife works as well,
if not better, than a small axe.

I used a piece of 5160 spring steel acquired from a small
trailer for the project. If you can’t
find a used leaf spring from a trailer then you can buy leaf spring sets at
either Northern Tool or Tractor Supply.
These are smaller leaf springs than found on automobiles and they make
excellent knives. Most of these leaf
springs are about 0.25 inch thick or a tad thicker and you really don’t want anything
more than that because a heavier spring requires much more pounding and if left
too thick won’t work adequately for woodcarving.

I canted the blade about 1/8 inch to the right so that it
would allow me to keep my wrist absolutely straight when chopping or rough
shaping a blank. I made three prototype
knives using a wooden handle and cardboard blades to get the angle
perfect. If you want to get an absolute
custom design made exactly to your specifications then you need to build a few
prototypes first. Commercial knives are
built for the masses and as such the blades are kept straight. But a custom knife need not be held to those
specifications and can be made to fit the user’s style. Think of this along the same lines as a
custom gunstock with canting along the comb in order to fit the shooter
perfectly. Knives can be built along the
same lines though most people don’t realize how much better an ergonomically designed
knife feels.

I looked around for the perfect handle shape and was lucky to
find two nicely curved pieces of wood. The
other piece awaits its blade. The stick
tang is 4.75 inches long and robust. A
4.75 inch long tang is essentially as long or longer than your average
bushcraft knife handle and thus just as strong.
In effect, this amounts to a full tang when considering stress factors
associated with light chopping. I triple
pinned the tang with one of the pins concealed beneath the copper ferrule.

As always there are other projects in queue. A man should know how to make things. Until you learn to make your own knives and
bows and woodworking tools; and you learn all the plants in your region;
and you learn biological ecology and ethnobotany and conservation biology at
more than the superficial level; and you learn to make your own traps and
cordage….Well, until you learn all of those things you’ll be a shopper but not a
bushman. But then after you’ve spent a
few years (as in a few decades) honing your skills you’ll start looking at just
about everything around you and you’ll think: You know, I can make a better one.
And you know what? You will!